“That’s what they all say,” I told the new guy. He looked kind of ratty, wearing cargo pants with a layered camo pattern that fiercely denied any stains as nothing more than faux foliage. And he stank like he’d spent too much time hanging around mall bathrooms. The smell was all too familiar.
“For real, dude. It’s the real shit - the OG. You know? Not even that flower-power 60’s mud-slinging hippie shit. Like, the reeeal shit, way before that. Made by some mad scientist type, like, CIA or something.”
For the record, I didn’t believe him. Acid, as far as I knew, had been gradually weakening ever since it became the go-to drug for the hippies back in the sixties. And so what if he had some batch stolen by some MK-Ultra army corporal? LSD is not like honey - it definitely had some best-before-date, or so I assumed anyway. So, in my mind, the guy was telling a tall tale to justify the stupidly high price he was asking.
The problem was that my old guy had disappeared. Which wasn’t exactly news, as dealers tend to disappear from time to time, be it to jail, rehab, or worse. I simultaneously hoped he would soon return from whatever shit he’d gotten himself into, but also that he would’ve stopped selling and instead moved at least three states away to start a carpentry business. He’d always liked to build stuff, but handmade furniture - unfortunately - isn’t as easy to procure or to sell as drugs. Either way, the new guy was the only guy I could get a hold of, so it’s not like I had a choice. In the end, I convinced him to go down ten dollars; so much for the rarity and complex history of his product, I guess. Fucking pawn stars bullshit.
The product wasn’t in its usual form, instead being a clear liquid in a tiny vial bolstered by a cap that held a pipette on the inside. The guy had told me to only take one or two drops, drop it under my tongue and let it sit for a hot minute until swallowing. Over the years I’d built a bit of a tolerance, so when I got home, I didn’t even measure drops, I just squeezed a sizable squirt into my mouth. It tasted bitter, and I almost panicked with the idea that maybe the guy had sold me some wicked poison and that I was about to die. Not a good mindset to kick things off, but I quickly brushed it off. If you want to take a lot of acid, you need to learn to brush things off.
For the first hour I felt nothing at all. I got pretty mad and began to believe that the rat-guy had ripped me off. But then again, I suspected as much from the start. So I guess that’s on me. The anger wouldn’t let go, though.
Disappointed and angry, I was about to leave my apartment to get some food. Maybe see if I’d bump into the guy and threaten him to give me my money back - which I would of course probably not do, but the thought satisfied my fury. But right as I was tying my left shoe, it hit me. The shoestrings began to elongate and twist in a mad pattern. With a deep sigh and a wide smile, I kicked off the shoe and with it the anger I’d built up. I still thought he’d told me a bullshit story and overpriced the shit out of me, but hey, at least it was acid. I headed to the living room and let myself fall on the couch, putting my feet up on the coffee table. I was ready.
I wanted to watch TV, but couldn’t find the remote. It wasn’t on the coffee table, not on the floor, not under the couch cushions. Not in peculiar places either where I’d sometimes put it like the fridge. Sometimes I’d get my wires crossed like that.
It was nowhere. I began to suspect that someone had stolen it. Then I began to suspect if that was a rational thought, which I knew it was not. I wondered why I’d thought of it, and as I did, the walls began to shapeshift. They looked like paintings filled with slightly luminous worms, or maybe snakes. They twisted and scuttled along and through each other. I wondered if the wall had somehow taken the remote, and if I just touched it my hand would go through and I could grab it.
Let me make something clear: the hallucinations, the things I was seeing at this point, they were normal. Or as normal as things can be when you’ve taken a hallucinogenic drug. But the thoughts weren’t. I realized this pretty quickly, and another frightening thought entered my mind: was the acid laced? Did that camo-wearing-rat-shit-fucker put something else into it, something that could be dangerous? And if it was laced, did he even know?
I began to pace around the living room, looking at each wormy wall with quick, frightened glances as I walked past them, like the way you look at some dodgy guy when you’re walking past them at night. My forehead had begun to sweat, which was usually the last place I’d sweat, meaning that my back and legs were probably wet already. I didn’t want to think about it, so I brushed it off. You need to brush it off.
Time seemed to skip. The windows that had cried the foul light of sunny, sane society became dark. How long had it been? I couldn’t say. I wished I had put on my smartwatch to see how much I’d walked. I didn’t dare to look at the clocks, because I somehow knew they would scare the shit out of me. Had they stopped, or had they continued on as normal? Both ideas frightened me. Had I skipped time, or had time skipped me? Was I still in time, or was I still moving? I decided to sit down - I realized I had been walking clockwise, which could theoretically speed up the exact same motion that clocks use to indicate time, in turn moving me forwards in time. That must be it. The possibility of walking counter-clockwise quickly presented itself, but I didn’t dare to try. Who knows where - or more accurately, when - I’d have ended up.
The room got darker, and everything began to shift. It wasn’t fast nor was it slow. I guess I’d describe it as deliberate. Yes, that’s it - everything shifted deliberately. The fear of death and all the ways in which one could die stabbed at my brain like ice picks. I tried to brush it off, but it wouldn’t, and I closed my eyes, hoping that upon opening them I’d be back in my regular apartment, the remote sitting neatly on the coffee table, and the TV blaring on in the background as the sun crossed the room through the windows.
I don’t know how long I kept my eyes closed, but at some point I began to hear something moving in front of me. I didn’t want to open them, but I had to see; the compulsion to see what you hear is frighteningly strong. When I opened my eyes, it felt like ripping off two sticky band-aids, and my eyes felt watery and foreign, like hard-boiled eggs connected by two dripping tentacles to the back of my brain. I had to blink a bunch until I could see clearly, and when I did, I wished I’d kept my eyes shut. I wished I had listened to that atavistic protector in the back of my brain.
My apartment was gone, or maybe it wasn’t, and it had been transformed and masked and defiled to resemble a cobble-stoned chamber that smelled damp and deep and unholy… like it hadn’t been made for humans - or by them. Light was scarce and sourceless, like an illuminated fog.
In the middle was the thing that moved, taking up almost the whole room. Or rather, it stood still, yet its body twisted with hundreds of little movements, all in their own separate patterns. It held no resemblance to anything real or unreal or even biblical, which were the three planes of existence I’d always thought all beings were objects of. Its form sent all of my senses into sheer panic at the otherness and wrongness of the creature, and it seemed to wither my mind into a grain of sand deep in the ocean’s darkness.
It was large, like, truck-sized. And round. It held a malformed head at the top, which was composed of gray flesh that squeezed hundreds of black, spider-like eyes together in clumps. They had no visible irises, and as they seemed to wrap around the whole head, I assumed it saw everything around it in clear detail. I could feel it looking at me, with eyes big and small, seeing me for all my plump and pink flesh and all my naive thoughts and small soul. Its presence affected every neuron and cell in my body, and it made my body and mind tremble with its sheer power.
Worst of all was its body. The thing looked like a thousand cysts and cancers melted into a giant, deflated ball, and all over it were tongues - human tongues. They protruded from holes which had edges that were moist from saliva, and mostly well cleaned as the tongues slobbered and spinned with an almost sexual fervor. Some holes were empty, and with a degrading instinct, I wondered what it might look like inside.
I was frozen, and all thought of hallucinations had vanished. This was too real not to be real, and yet, if this was real, it made me afraid of the world and the things that bellow beneath. Just as I was about to burst from the sheer madness of it, the thing spoke to me.
“What is your name?” it said with a rumbling, effeminate voice, like a lady who’d smoked for fifty years and eaten her cereal with whiskey instead of milk.
I tried to say “I’m Eddie,” but what came out sounded like “m’hdie.”
The thing did not respond, and so I gulped the last of the saliva in my mouth, leaving it dry, and with a distinctly human awkwardness and social reflexiveness asked it “Who are you?”
“So, you’ve got manners. That’s a start,” it rumbled. “I am…” it seemed to think for a moment “the mother. That’s what they named me.” The tongues slithered in unison as it spoke, yet their movements did not match the words. The voice was coming from somewhere inside it.
I didn’t know exactly how to respond, and as it seemed to enjoy casual conversation, I reflexively asked “How many children do you have?”
“Not your kind of mother. But yes, they call me that. I am the mother, yes, but not of the children. I am the mother that lies beyond, the thing that your kind calls madness. I haven’t seen your kind in a long time. Not many have come through.”
“Have you…” All questions sounded insane, but they also brought a semblance of humanity to the situation, so I pressed on, “Have you always been here?”
“Not for long. They brought me here. Men, like you, yet unlike you. They brought me here and they brought themselves. And then others, not like them, more like you. And I talked with them all. Soon they stopped coming. No more of your kind. But sometimes they still come. Like you.”
I was about to ask it something more, which I now can’t remember, but it interrupted the connection between mind and tongue. “I have enjoyed you. But now you must go. I grow tired. Give me your tongue.”
“What?” I asked.
“Your tongue. Put it inside me. Let me feel you.”
Was it asking me to insert my tongue into one of the empty orifices? That was the only logical conclusion, yet the thought was so vile it made my stomach turn and my mind blank, but in that emptiness of fatalism, it also felt wickedly, disgustingly invigorating.
“NOW!” it bellowed. The tongues were now writhing like worms chopped in half, slapping the flesh like an audience clapping for the show. I didn’t have a choice. Somehow I knew that. So I walked towards the mother and found a hole that seemed the least disgusting. I didn’t dare to look inside, so I closed my eyes and leaned my head forward with my tongue sticking out, hoping to get whatever this was over quickly.
As my head approached it, the nearby tongues began to lick at me with sharp, lusting movements. They quickly covered me in thick mucus and saliva, slashing at my chest and forehead and cheeks like wolves at their prey. I pressed my face into the flesh and found the hole with the tip of my tongue, squeezing my eyes shut so hard it hurt and made me see golden streaks whipping at the insides of my eyelids.
Once my tongue was fully inside, I felt my body relax. Sunday morning. I was back in my childhood home, with mom making pancakes in the kitchen, the cartoons on the TV blaring loudly. All worries disintegrated, and my flesh became tender and loved. I hugged the creature and the tongues worshiped me, cleaning me with loving strokes. I licked the inside of the hole, jutting my tongue in the creases of warm flesh that tasted like pears. I was loved.
Then my tongue got stuck. Something from the inside had grabbed it, and before I could fully realize what was happening, it ripped my tongue in a clean swoop, and with it the love that I had felt. I fell backwards and cried, betrayed by mother. Betrayed by love. Anger took hold now, and I could taste iron in my mouth. The nub inside my mouth felt like it was choking me., the blood gushing in thick swirls around my throat.
As I got up, I could see the hole twist and turn until my tongue protruded out of the hole. It began to lick at the edges, caressing them sweetly like a teenager having their first, awkward kiss. The sight burned through me, splitting my mind in half, and leaving me stranded as to what to do.
I think I passed out then, but it felt like I was forced out. It’s hard to say. Either way, when I woke up, I was back in my apartment sitting on the couch, with the vial sitting neatly next to the remote on the coffee table.
My mouth felt empty. I moved my tongue, and I couldn’t touch my front teeth. Panic struck me, and I ran to the bathroom. In front of the mirror I opened my mouth. My tongue was a nub, cut cleanly into a carrot-like pudge of flesh. I began to cry and tried to speak, but all that came out was gibberish.
I spent the next few days looking for the new guy who had sold me the acid, or whatever the fuck it was. He was gone, and no one else said they’d ever seen him. Everyone asked about the tongue, but what could I tell them? They’d think I’m crazy. They probably did already.
I’ve come into a new life since then. Obviously, I stopped taking drugs, although I’m not one of those people who preaches to others about what they should or shouldn’t take. Not like those people ever made a difference for me. But the thing is, now that the anger and panic and betrayal has subsided, there’s still something left of that day in me.
I’ve never felt as happy as I was with the mother. I wish to go back there, even just once, just to feel that love again.
And even though I stopped taking drugs, I couldn’t make myself get rid of the vial.